How to rigorously test a site?

Question

How does one rigorously test a site for both security and speed?

What are the ways and tools for that?

Can we mimic hundreds of virtual users visiting the si

Answer 1

http://seleniumhq.org/ is the technology to look for.

Quotes from their site:

Selenium is a robust set of tools that supports rapid development of test automation for web-based applications. Selenium provides a rich set of testing functions specifically geared to the needs of testing of a web application. These operations are highly flexible, allowing many options for locating UI elements and comparing expected test results against actual application behavior.

One of Selenium’s key features is the support for executing one’s tests on multiple browser platforms.

The most important part is probably: Selenium-RC (Remote Control)

Selenium-RC allows the test automation developer to use a programming language for maximum flexibility and extensibility in developing test logic. For instance, if the application under test returns a result set, and if the automated test program needs to run tests on each element in the result set, the programming language’s iteration support can be used to iterate through the result set, calling Selenium commands to run tests on each item.

Selenium-RC provides an API (Application Programming Interface) and library for each of its supported languages: HTML, Java, C#, Perl, PHP, Python, and Ruby. This ability to use Selenium-RC with a high-level programming language to develop test cases also allows the automated testing to be integrated with a project’s automated build environment.